"LOVE IN THESE LABYRINTHS HIS SLAVES DETAINS."
At Lavendale Manor there was no note of expectancy, no stir among the
old servants. His lordship had given no intimation of his return. The
grooms had to rouse their underlings in the stable from the state of
beery somnolence which followed upon a heavy supper. The butler bustled
his subordinates and sent off the housemaids to light fires in all the
rooms his lordship affected, and in the bedroom and dressing-room known
as Mr. Durnford's, and urged cook and scullions to be brisk in the
preparation of a pretty little supper. Happily there was a goose hanging
in the larder, ready to be clapped on the spit, and this, with the chine
which had been cooked for the servants' dinner, and a large venison
pasty, with half a dozen speedy sweet dishes, would make a tolerable
supper for two gentlemen. The old Italian never joined his patron at
meals. He fed apart upon a diet of his own choosing, and on principles
laid down by Roger Bacon and Paracelsus--taking only the lightest food,
and selecting all those roots and herbs which conduce to long life.
Lavendale went straight to the old chapel, without even waiting to take
off his boots. The student's attitude amidst his books and crucibles
might have suggested that he had been sitting there like Frederick
Barbarossa in his cave, ever since that summer evening upon which his
lordship had with equal suddenness burst in upon his studies.
"Well, old friend, how do thy researches thrive? Is Hermes propitious?"
asked Lavendale gaily. "Hast thou hit upon an easy way of manufacturing
diamonds, or turning vulgar lead into the golden rain in which Danaë's
ravisher veiled his divinity? Art thou any nearer the great secret?"
"Do you remember the infinitely little to which distance is reduced in
that fable of Achilles and the tortoise?" asked Vincenti; "and how by
descending to infinitesimals the logician gives the idea of progress,
and thus establishes a paradox? My progress has been infinitely little;
but yes, I think there has been something gained since we parted."
The sigh with which his sentence closed was not indicative of triumph.
The finely cut features were drawn with thought and care; the skin,
originally a pale olive, was withered and yellow, and had a
semitransparent look, like old parchment. Death could hardly be more wan
and wasted than life appeared in this searcher into the dark mysteries
of man and Nature.
"You have been absent longer than usual," said the old man, "or at least
it seems to me that it has been so. I may be mistaken, for I keep no
actual count of time--except this bare record of years."
He turned to a flyleaf in a black-letter volume at his right hand; and
on that, beginning in ink that had grown brown and pale with time, there
appeared a calendar of years, and opposite each the name of a place.
This was the only record of the philosopher's existence. Lavendale's
keen eye noted that it began early in the previous century, and that the
handwriting was uniform throughout, though the colour of the ink
varied. Could this man, whom he had guessed at about seventy years old,
have really seen the beginning of the last century? Vincenti had been
ever curiously reticent about his past life--had told his patron only
one fact in his history, namely, that he was by birth and parentage a
Venetian.
"No, my dear friend, you are not mistaken; I stayed longer in town than
I intended when I left you. People seemed glad to see me--mere seeming,
of course, since in that selfish town of ours there is not a mortal who
cares a snap of the fingers for any other mortal; except lovers, and
theirs is but a transient semi-selfish liking. But there is a
fascination in crowds; and I saw a woman who has quite forgotten me, but
whom I never can forget."
"How do you know she has forgotten you?"
"By her indifference."
"Assumed as likely as not. There is no such hypocrisy as a woman's.
There are liars and traitors among men, I grant you, but with them
falsehood is an acquired art. In a woman deceit is innate: a part of her
very being. She will smile at you and lie to you with the virginal
sweetness of sixteen as cleverly as with the wrinkled craftiness of
sixty. Never believe in a woman's affectation of indifference. It is the
safest mask for passion. They all wear it."
"If I thought that it were so: if I thought Judith Topsparkle still
loved me--"
"Topsparkle!" muttered the old man, staring at him in blank wonder.
"Did I think those old embers were not quite extinct, did I think that
one lingering spark remained, I would risk the world to rekindle them,
would perish in the blaze, die in a savage triumph of love and despair,
like Dido on her pyre. But no, she is a woman of fashion pure and
simple, cares no more for me than Belinda cared for Sir Plume."
"Topsparkle!" repeated Vincenti; "whom do you know of that name?"
"Only the famous Vyvyan Topsparkle, dilettante, eccentric, and
Croesus. A gentleman whose name is familiar, and even illustrious, in
all the countries where works of art are to be seen and fine music is to
be heard. A gentleman who left England forty years ago with a very vile
reputation, and who has not improved it on the Continent; but we do not
hang men of fabulous fortune: we visit them at their country houses,
ride their horses, win their money at basset, and revile them behind
their backs. Mr. Topsparkle is a very fine gentleman, and has been lucky
enough to marry the loveliest woman in London, who has made his house
the fashion."
"Vyvyan Topsparkle! I thought he had gone into a Portuguese
monastery--turned Trappist, and repented of his sins. I was told so ten
years ago."
"Yes, I remember there was a rumour of that kind soon after I left the
University. I believe the gentleman disappeared for some time, and
stimulated the inventive powers of his friends by a certain
mysteriousness of conduct; but I can assure you there is nothing of the
monk about Mr. Topsparkle nowadays. He is altogether the fop and man of
fashion, and, if wrinkles counted for nothing, would be almost a young
man."
"He is a scoundrel, and may he meet with a scoundrel's doom!" muttered
Vincenti gloomily.
"What, have you any personal acquaintance with him? Did you ever meet
him in Italy?"
"Yes, more than forty years ago."
Lavendale flushed and paled again in his agitation. Here was one who
perchance might help him to some clue to that old mystery, the scandal
and suspected crime related by Tom Philter. He told Vincenti the story
exactly as Philter had told it to him.
The old man listened intently, those dark eyes of his shining under the
bushy white brows, shining with the reflected light of the fire, shining
with a fiercer light from within.
"I have heard this story before," he said.
"And do you believe it? Do you believe there was foul play?"
"Yes, I believe Vyvyan Topsparkle was a murderer as well as a seducer.
It is not true that his mistress was a dancing-girl. She was a girl of
respectable birth, brought up in a convent--highly gifted, a genius,
with the voice and face of an angel."
"Good Heaven, you speak of her with the utmost familiarity! Did you know
her?"
There was a pause before the old man answered. He turned over the pages
of the book he had been reading when Lavendale entered, and seemed for
the moment as if he had forgotten the subject of their conversation.
"Did you know that unhappy girl?" Lavendale asked eagerly.
"I knew something of her people," answered Vincenti, without looking up.
"They belonged to the trading class of Venice, but had noble blood in
their veins. The father was a jeweller and something of an artist. The
girl's disappearance made a scandal in Venice. She had but just left her
convent school. It was not known where the seducer had taken her. A near
relative followed them--tracked them to Paris--followed them from Paris
to London--in time to see a coffin carried out of the house in Soho
Square, and to hear dark hints of poison. He stayed in London for nearly
a year; wore out his heart in useless efforts to discover any proof of
the crime which was suspected by more than one, most of all by an
apothecary who was called in to see the dying girl; tried to get an
order for the exhumation of the body, but in vain. He was a foreigner,
and poor; Mr. Topsparkle was an Englishman of large fortune. The
government scented a Jacobite Jesuit in the Italian, or at any rate
pretended to think him dangerous, and he had notice to leave the
country. He left, but not before Topsparkle had fled from the blast of
scandal. His attempt to become a senator confounded him. Slander had
slept until the Brentford election."
"Yes, that chimes in with Philter's account," answered Lavendale. "Do
you know what became of the girl's father?"
Vincenti shrugged his shoulders.
"Died, I suppose, of a broken heart. He was too insignificant to make
any mark upon history."
"Well, I am quite ready to believe Mr. Topsparkle to be a double-dyed
scoundrel--and yet I am going to sit at his table and sleep under his
roof. That is what good company means nowadays. Nobody asks any
searching questions about a host's character. If his wines and his cook
are faultless, and his wife is handsome, every one is satisfied: and on
this occasion Mr. Topsparkle's company is to be exceptionally
distinguished. Swift is to be there, the Irish patriot and
ecclesiastical Jack Pudding, who is just now puffed with importance at
the success of his queer hook about giants, pigmies, and what not; and
there is a talk of Voltaire, the young French wit, who has been twice
beaten for his _bon-mots_, and twice a prisoner in the Bastille, and who
is in England only because France is too hot to hold him. There is a
promise of Bolingbroke, too, and a hint of my queer kinswoman, Lady
Mary, who made such a figure the other night at the Prince's ball. We
shall doubtless make a strange medley, and I would not be out of the fun
for anything in this world, even though in his hot youth Mr. Topsparkle
may have played the character of Othello with a phial of poison instead
of a bolster. After all, Vincenti, jealousy is a noble passion, and a
man may have worse motives for murder."
The old man made no answer, and as supper was announced at this moment,
the conversation ended.
There was something in Lavendale's manner which told of a mind ill at
ease, perchance even of a remorseful conscience; but he had the air of a
man who defied Fate, and who meant to be happy in his own way.
To the belated peasant tramping homeward beside the lessor Avon,
Ringwood Abbey in the December gloaming must have looked as like an
enchanted palace as it is possible for any earthly habitation ever to
look. Provided always that the peasant had heard of fairyland and its
wonderful castles, which shine suddenly out upon wandering princes,
luminous with multitudinous windows, and joyous with the buzz and
clatter of an army of servants and a court of fine ladies and gentlemen.
Ringwood Abbey was all ablaze with wax candles, and reflected its Gothic
casements in yonder sedgy stream until it seemed to outshine the stars
in the cold clear winter sky. This earthly illumination was so much
nearer than the stars, and to the agricultural labourer tramping
homeward after a day at the plough-tail was suggestive of pleasanter
thoughts than were inspired by yonder cold and distant lights of heaven.
Ringwood Abbey meant broken victuals in abundance, and money flung about
recklessly by the Squire and his London guests. It meant horse and
hound, and all the concomitants of a big hunting-stable. It meant custom
for every little tradesman in the village, and charities on a large
scale to the poor. It meant beauty and splendour and stateliness and
music to gladden the eye and the ear. It meant bribery at elections,
largesse at all times and seasons. It meant all that a large country
house, carried on with a noble disregard of cost, can ever mean to the
surrounding neighbourhood. Needless, therefore, to add that in this
little corner of Hampshire, beside the lesser Avon, Mr. Topsparkle was a
very popular gentleman, and Lady Judith a queen among women, a goddess
to be worshipped by all who came but to the outermost edge of her
enchanted circle.
It was the cheery eventide after a five-o'clock dinner. They dined late
at this season on account of the hunting-men, and even then there were
some eager sportsmen who would rather miss their dinner than draw bridle
before the doom of Reynard; and these came in ravenous to the
ten-o'clock supper, full of their adventures over heath and through
stream, and a most intolerable nuisance to the non-hunting people.
My Lord Bolingbroke, lolling at ease yonder in a carved oak armchair,
coquetting with Lady Judith, had once been the keenest of sportsmen, and
was fond of hunting still, but not quite so reluctant to miss a day's
sport as he had been a few years ago.
"Do you remember our wolf-hunt at La Source, the winter you were with
us, Arouet?" he asked, following up a conversation half in French and
half in English, in which he and Lady Judith, a young gentleman standing
in front of the fireplace, and Lord Lavendale had been engaged for the
last quarter of an hour. "I had some very fine hounds that Lord Gore
sent me, and I was curious to see whether they would attack a wolf
boldly, or sneak off as soon as he stood at bay. 'Twas a stirring
business for men, horses, and hounds; but, after all, I think there is
nothing better than a genuine British fox-hunt."
"In France we study the picturesque and romantic in sport," said the
tall slim gentleman lounging in front of the wide mediæval fireplace,
whom Bolingbroke addressed sometimes familiarly as Arouet, and anon by
his newly assumed name of Voltaire. "You English seem only to regard the
practical--so many miles ridden over, so many foxes slaughtered, so
many pheasants shot. With you the chase is a matter of statistics; with
us it is a royal ceremony, diversion for kings and courtiers. Our
hunting-parties are as stately and picturesque under Louis as they were
under Charlemagne. Ours is the poetry of the chase, yours the prose."
"True, my dear Voltaire, but for horseflesh and pedigree hounds we are
as far your superiors as you excel us in gold-lace coats and jewelled
hunting-knives, or in the noise and fuss of your _curée_; while for hard
riding--well, you hunt for the most part in a country that scarcely
admits of fine horsemanship."
"It is one of our misfortunes not to be a nation of centaurs, my lord,"
answered Voltaire lightly and in English, which he spoke admirably,
although he dropped into his own language occasionally. "I envy you
English gentlemen your superb capacity for outdoor sports and your noble
independence of intellectual amusements. Of course I except your
lordship from the category of average Englishmen, who devote their days
to killing birds and beasts, and their evenings to the study of blood
and murder tragedies by their favourite Shakespeare."
"0, don't be too hard upon our sturdy British taste, my dear friend. We
read Shakespeare occasionally, I admit, but we very seldom act his
plays. That pretty foolish comedy, _As You Like It_, has never been
represented since the author's death; and I protest there are some
love-making scenes in it that would not disgrace Dryden or Wycherley."
"Do you know, Monsieur de Voltaire, that I delight in Shakespeare?" said
Lady Judith, who sat on a sofa by the fire, fanning herself with a
superb listlessness, and leaning down now and then to caress her
favourite pug.
"From the moment Lady Judith admires him he is sacred," said the
Frenchman gaily; "but you must confess that there is a crudeness about
his tragedies, an extravagance of blood and wounds and sudden death,
which can hardly stand comparison with such calm and polished
compositions as _Phèdre_ or _Le Cid_."
"I place Shakespeare infinitely higher than Racine or Corneille, and I
consider his tragedies sublime," replied Judith, with the air of a
woman who has the privilege of being positive even when she is talking
nonsense.
"What, that refined and delicate Roman story, for instance--_Titus
Andronicus_, and Lavinia with her bleeding stumps, and the profligate
blackamoor?"
"0, we give you Lavinia and her stumps," cried Bolingbroke, laughing.
"We repudiate _Titus Andronicus_. It is the work of an earlier
playwright, to which Shakespeare only gave a few fine touches; and those
flashes of genius have made the whole play pass for inspired."
"0, if you are going to repudiate everything coarse and brutal which
passes for Shakespeare, and claim only the finer touches for his, you
may succeed in establishing him as a great poet. Would that we might all
be judged as leniently by future critics! What say you, Mr. Topsparkle?
You are a man of cosmopolitan tastes, and have doubtless compared your
native playwrights with those of other nations, from Æschylus
downwards."
"I care not a jot for the whole mass of English literature," answered
Topsparkle, snapping his taper fingers with an airy gesture; "and as for
Shakespeare, I have never soiled my fingers by turning his pages. My
mental stamina is not robust enough to cope with his monstrosities."
"And yet you revel in foreign coarseness; you devour Boccaccio and
Rabelais," said his wife, with a scornful glance at the pinched painted
face and frail figure airing itself before the wide old hearth, set off
by a gray and silver brocade suit with scarlet shoulder-knots.
"Ah, my dear Judith, no woman can appreciate the grace of Boccaccio nor
the wit of Rabelais. Your sex is seldom delicately critical. A butcher
brute, like Shakespeare, pleases you because he conjures up scenes of
blood and murder which your imagination can easily realise; but the
niceties of wit are beyond your comprehension."
"I would rather have written the _Rape of the Lock_ than all
Shakespeare's plays and poems to boot. 'Tis the best mock-heroic poem
that ever was written," said Voltaire, pleased to compliment Lord
Bolingbroke by praising his friend. To the exile, the favour of the
Lord of Dawley was not altogether unimportant, and Arouet had been on a
footing of friendship with Bolingbroke and his wife for some years, a
favoured guest at his lordship's château near Orleans. He had sat at
Bolingbroke's feet, and imbibed his opinions.
The _Henriade_ was still awaiting publication, and Francis Arouet had an
eye to his subscription-list; a man at all times supple and adroit, ever
able to make the best of every situation, dexterous alike as wit and
poet, courtier, lover, speculator, flushed with the small social
successes of his brilliant youth, secure in the friendship of royal
duchesses and _roué_ princes, accepted in a society far above his birth,
envied and hated by the malignant few--witness M. de Rohan's brutal
retaliation--but petted and caressed by the many. Who could wonder that
such a man, accustomed to float easily on the very crest of the wave,
should be quite at home at Ringwood Abbey, oppressed neither by
Bolingbroke's intellectual superiority nor by Lady Judith's insolent
beauty?
"Nothing can excel perfection," answered Bolingbroke blandly. "My little
friend's poem is an Y entire and perfect chrysolite; but it is
perfection in miniature. I hope to see Pope excel on a larger scale and
with a loftier theme. He is capable of writing a great philosophical
poem, which shall place him above Lucretius."
"Hang up philosophy! I only care for Pope when he is personal," said
Lady Judith. "He is like that other small creature, the adder, only of
consequence when he stings."
"One would suppose he had stung you," retorted her husband.
"No, I have not yet been assailed in print. My time is to come, I
suppose. But last summer, when all the world was at Twit'nam, there was
not a day passed that I did not hear of some venomous shaft which Poet
Pug had let fly at one of my friends. No doubt he is just as spiteful
about me, only one's friends don't repeat such things to one's face."
"Not to such a face as yours, madam," said the Frenchman. "Malevolence
itself must yield to the magic of incomparable charms."
The conversation meandered on in the same trifling strain, Lavendale
silent for the most part, standing in the shadow of the carved oak
mantelpiece and casting uneasy glances from time to time towards his
hostess, who seemed too much occupied by Lord Bolingbroke to be aware of
anybody else's presence, save when she flung some casual speech into the
current of idle talk. It was but eight o'clock, and they had dined at
five. Seldom did that deep drinker, Henry St. John, leave the table so
early. To-night he had not stayed to finish his second bottle of
Burgundy ere he joined Lady Judith in the drawing-room, and had given
the signal for the breaking up of the party, much to the disappointment
of Sir Tilbury Haskell, an honest Hampshire squire, who had heard of
Bolingbroke as a four-bottle man, and had hoped to make a night of it in
such distinguished company. Mr. Topsparkle had that Continental sobriety
which is always offensive to Englishmen, and Voltaire was equally
temperate. Sir Tilbury rolled his ponderous carcass to the billiard-room
to snore on a sofa until supper-time, when there would be a
well-furnished table for the sportsmen and more Champagne and Burgundy.
Bolingbroke was charmed with his hostess. That proud beauty, in its
glorious prime of early womanhood, made him for the moment forgetful of
his accomplished French wife, who was just then invalided at Bath, where
he was to join her in a few days. It was not that he was unfaithful to
his wife even in thought, but that his vanity hungered for new
conquests. The triumphant Alcibiades of Anne's reign had become the
boastful libertine who would fain be credited with new successes in the
hour when he feels his seductive power on the wane.
This evening hour found Lord Bolingbroke in his lightest mood, warmed
with wine, expansive, happy; but the cold winter daylight had seen him
seated at his desk, thoughtful and laborious, writing the first number
of the _Craftsman_, a newspaper of which he and William Pulteney were to
be joint editors and proprietors, and which was to be launched almost
immediately. That noble brow, now so bland and placid, had but a few
hours ago been crowded with eager and vengeful thoughts, and was even at
this moment but the smooth mask of an ambition that never slept, of a
craft that never ceased from plotting, of a resolute determination to
succeed at the expense of every finer feeling and of every loftier
scruple. That deep and thrilling voice, which to-night breathed soft
nothings into Judith's ear, had but a week ago been insinuating slanders
against Walpole into the complacent ear of the King's favourite, her
Grace of Kendal, ever a willing listener to the courtier who would
weight his arguments with gold.
Lavendale watched yonder handsome profligate with a jealous eye. Yes,
Judith listened as if with pleasure to those insidious addresses. The
lovely eyes sparkled, the lovely lips smiled.
"She is an arrant coquette," thought Lavendale. "Years have made her
charms only more seducing, her manners only more reckless. She may be
laughing in her sleeve at yonder middle-aged Lothario; but it pleases
her to fool him to the top of his bent--pleases her most, perhaps, to
know that I am standing by and suffering damnable tortures."
Judith looked up at that moment, almost as if in answer to his thought,
and their eyes met.
"I protest you have quite a disconsolate air, Lord Lavendale!" she
exclaimed. "What has become of your charmer, and how is it you are
not in close attendance upon her? I saw her wander off to the
music-room directly after dinner, and I believe your umbra--Mr.
What-d'ye-call-him--went with her. Mr. What-d'ye-call-him is fonder of
music than you are."
"My friend Herrick Durnford is in all things, more accomplished than I."
"If he is, you had better keep a closer watch upon your own interests,"
said Judith, shaking her fan at him.
"I have nothing so sordid as interest to consider at Ringwood Abbey. I
am here only for pleasure. _Fay ce que vouldras_ is my motto, as it was
with the monks of that other abbey we know of."
"And a devilish good motto it is, Lavendale," exclaimed Topsparkle.
"'Fore Gad I have a mind, to get those cheery words hewn on the front of
the stone porch, or inscribed on parchment and fastened, on the lintel
of the door, in the Jewish fashion."
"You had better not," said Bolingbroke; "your friends might interpret
the inscription too literally, and stay here for ever. Try it not upon
me, Topsparkle, unless you would have me a fixture. For a man like
myself, who is wearied of worldly strife and has renounced ambition,
there could be no more tempting cloister than Ringwood Abbey."
"Your lordship cannot stay here too long, or come here too often,"
answered Topsparkle; "but I doubt the French saying holds good in this
case, _reculer pour mieux sauter_, and that when Lord Bolingbroke talks
of the cloister, he is on the eve of restoring a dynasty, and of
changing the face of Europe."
"No, Topsparkle, 'tis only Peterborough who has those large ideas, who
parcels out the world in a letter, as if with a FIAT and the breath of
his mouth it could be accomplished; and who flies from court to court
with meteoric speed, only to embroil the government that sent him, and
make confusion worse confounded. And as for restoring a dynasty, the
hour is past. Atterbury and I might have done it thirteen years ago had
our colleagues but shown a little pluck. High Church and a Stuart would
have been a safe cry against a Lutheran and a stranger--witness the
temper of the mob at Sacheverell's trial. There was your true test. The
people were heart and soul for James III., and had we brought him home
then, he might have made as glorious an entrance as Rowley himself. But
we had to do with palterers, and we lost our chance, Topsparkle; and
now--well, King George has lived down the worst of his unpopularity, and
Walpole is a deuced clever fellow, and my very good friend, to whom I
owe the nicely measured mercy of my King. The chance has gone, friends,
the chance is lost. The year '15 only made matters worse by showing the
weakness of the cause. Tis all over. Let us go to the music-room. Your
young friend, Squire Bosworth's heiress, has the voice of a
nightingale."
"You had better come to the dining-hall, my lord," said Topsparkle. "Our
hunting friends will have found their way home by this time, and we can
taste a bottle of Burgundy while they take their snack of chine or
venison pasty."
"No, I will drink no more till supper-time," answered Bolingbroke.
"There is a novel sensation in temperance which is deucedly agreeable.
And then I delight in your snug little suppers, which recall Paris and
the Regent. Alas, to think that worthy fellow is no more! Half the
glory of the French capital expired when my poor friend Philip sank in
an apoplexy, with his head upon the knees of the pretty Duchesse de
Phalaris. It was a sorry change from such a man to one-eyed Bourbon,
with his savage manners, brutal alike in his loves and his animosities.
And now we have Peace-at-any-price Fleury, whose humour admirably suits
my pacific friend Sir Robert. But let us to the music-room."
"Nay, my lord, what say you to a hand at quadrille? The tables are ready
in the next room."
"I'm with you, Topsparkle. I'm your man."
"Now, is it not strange that Mr. Topsparkle, who raves about every
Italian squaller that Handel and Heidegger import for us, should be
supremely indifferent to one of the sweetest voices I ever heard!"
exclaimed Lady Judith, appealing to the circle in general. "I cannot
induce him to be interested in that charming Mrs. Bosworth, who is so
pretty and who sings so delightfully."
"O, but she is only an Englishwoman," said Voltaire. "I find that in
this country it is a vulgar thing to admire native merit, especially in
music."
"Yes, but Topsparkle is cosmopolitan. I have seen him make much of a
ploughboy who happened to have a fine alto voice, stand the little
wretch beside his organ and teach him to sing an air of Lully's,
listening with as much rapture as to Farinelli himself. Why, then,
should he refuse to admire Mrs. Bosworth, who has as lovely a voice as
ever I heard, and who is as much a fanatic about music as he is himself?
Nay, he goes further than not admiring; he has an air of positive
aversion when the dear girl chances to approach him."
Topsparkle's face changed as much as any face so thickly enamelled could
change under the influence of angry feelings. He turned towards his wife
scowlingly, began to speak, checked himself abruptly, and then with his
airy French shrug said lightly, "All sensitive people have their
caprices, my dear Judith; one of mine is not to like this charming
personage whom you and your friends rave about. I hope I have not been
uncivil to the young lady. I should die of mortification could I deem I
had been discourteous to a pretty woman and my guest."
"No, you have not been actually uncivil: but your looks of aversion have
not escaped me, though I trust they have escaped her," answered Judith.
"At the worst I have not the evil eye. My glances do not slay."
Lavendale strolled off to the music-room, a noble apartment, which had
originally been a chapel, and which retained its vaulted roof and
frescoed walls, in all the richness of restored colouring and precious
metal. At one end stood an organ built by the Antignati in the fifteenth
century; at the other was an instrument in which the art of
organ-building had been brought to the highest perfection by the
renowned Christopher Müller. The central portion of the room was
occupied by the finest harpsichord of modern manufacture, and by a
choice collection of older instruments of the same type, from the
primitive dulcimer to the more developed spinet. Scattered about the
spacious apartment were chairs and couches of the last luxurious French
fashion, in all the florid richness of that elaborate style which we
still recognise as Louis Quatorze, and which was then the latest
development of the upholsterer's art.
Irene was seated at the harpsichord, and Herrick Durnford was standing
by her side; but the heiress was not unguarded, for Lady Tredgold sat
near, slumbering peacefully behind her fan, and giving full play to the
mechanism of her admirable digestive organs after a copious dinner. For
the rest, the room was empty.
The singer was just finishing a dainty little ballad by Tom Durfey as
Lavendale entered.
"Is it not pretty?" she asked, looking shyly up at Herrick, whose
taciturn air vexed her a little and mystified her much.
"Yes, it is charming, like everything you sing."
"How dolefully you say that!" she exclaimed.
"Yes, I confess to being doleful, the very incarnation of gloom. O Rena,
forgive me, I am the most miserable of men! Here I am in this great
gaudy tavern, for such a house is no better than an inn--seeing you
every day, hearing your voice, near you and yet leagues away--never
daring to address you freely save in such a chance moment as this,
while your vigilant kinswoman sleeps; here am I, your adorer, your
slave, but a pauper who dare not ask for your heart, though his own is
irrevocably yours. To ask you to marry me would be to ask you to ruin
yourself irretrievably."
"You might at least venture the question," said Rena softly, looking
down at the keys of the harpsichord. "Perhaps I have a mind to do some
wild rash act that will beggar me. I am weary of hearing myself talked
of as an heiress. My father has been very good to me, and I am very fond
of him. I should fear much more to grieve him than to lose a fortune. I
could not be a rebellious daughter; better that I should break my heart
than break his: and he has told me that all his hopes of the future are
centred in me. Could you not talk to him, could you not persuade him--?"
she added falteringly, touching the notes at random here and there in
her confusion.
"Persuade him to accept a penniless newspaper hack for his only
daughter's husband! Alas, I fear not, Rena. If I could but find some
swift sudden way to fame and fortune--in the senate, for instance! A
fine speaker may make his name in one debate, and stand out ever after
from the common ruck; and I think I could speak fairly well on any
question that I had at heart."
"O, pray be a speaker; go into Parliament directly!" exclaimed Rena
eagerly.
"Dear child, it is not so easy. It needs money, which I have not, or
powerful friends, and I have but one, who is also my rival. Alas, I fear
a seat in Parliament is as unattainable for me as the moon. And the age
of adventure is past, in which, a man might grow suddenly rich by
dabbling in South Sea stock. 'Twas said the Prince of Wales made forty
thousand pounds on 'Change at that golden season, and Lord Bolingbroke
restored his fortune by a lucky purchase of Mississippi stocks. But it
is all over now, Rena."
"I have heard it said 'twas by South Sea stock my father made the
greatest part of his fortune," said the girl thoughtfully. "If it is so
I wish he were poorer, for one must but think of those poor creatures
who paid thousands for shares that proved scarce worth hundreds."
"That is only the fortune of Exchange Alley, Irene: and from the
speculator's standpoint your father's honour is uncompromised and his
conscience may be easy. Yet I grant 'tis no pleasant thought to consider
those simple widows and foolish rustic spinsters who risked their all in
that fatal adventure, fondly believing that an endless tide of wealth
was to flow from those far-off seas, and that there was to be no ebb to
that golden stream. But indeed, Irene, I would with all my heart you
were poorer. I would Squire Bosworth had dabbled in all the rottenest
schemes of those wild days, from the company for extracting silver from
lead to the company for a wheel for perpetual motion, so long as his
losses brought our fortunes level."
"You should not wish me poor," she answered. "If my father's wealth is
but honestly come by, I should be proud to share some of it with one I
loved. And if you can but persuade him--"
"Well, I will try, dearest, though I know that to avow my aim will be to
banish me from this dear presence for ever--unless you can be bold
enough to risk your fortune and disobey your father."
They had been talking in subdued tones so as not to awaken Lady
Tredgold, at whom they glanced from time to time to make sure that her
placid slumbers were unbroken. Lord Lavendale stood at the end of the
room, in the shadow of the great organ, watching those two heads as they
bent to each other, Herrick's arm on the back of Irene's chair, the
girl's, head drooping a little, bowed by the weight of her modesty. He
was quite able to draw his own inferences from such a group.
"Is it thus the land lies," he said to himself, "and shall I spoil sport
by a loveless wooing--I, whose heart, or whatever remnant of heart is
left, belongs to another? Better let youth and true love have their own
way--unless Herrick is fortune-hunting. But I know him too well to
suspect him of any sordid motive. He is a better man than I, though we
have lived the same bad lives together."
He gave a little cough, and walked towards that central space where the
lovers sat in front of the harpsichord. They started, and moved farther
apart at the sound of his footsteps, and Lady Tredgold opened her eyes
and blinked at the company like an owl, exclaiming, "Can I really have
been asleep? That ballad of Rameau's is the sweetest thing I have heard
for an age, Irene. Lord Lavendale, you must positively hear it: I know
you love old French music."
"All melody from such lips is entrancing, and such lips can speak only
music," said his lordship, bowing to Irene, who had risen, rosy red in
her confusion, and who acknowledged his compliment with a low curtsy.
END OF VOL. I.
End of Project Gutenberg's Mohawks, Volume 1 of 3, by Mary Elizabeth Braddon